


To You

by Vedicanarchist



Category: The Wicker Man (1973)
Genre: Angst, Fantasy, Inspired by Poetry, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Meta, Paganism, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 10:17:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19332529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vedicanarchist/pseuds/Vedicanarchist
Summary: Lord Summerisle is tormented by love for Sergeant Howie.





	To You

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The characters belong to Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer. I do not own them. 
> 
> The work is named for the Walt Whitman poem quoted throughout. It was also inspired by a deleted scene in the movie, where Lord Summerisle offers Sergeant Howie a taste of the island's original apple.

 

_Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,_

_I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet and hands_

_Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,_

_Your true soul and body appear before me,_

_They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work, farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying._

 

Sergeant Neil Howie had put his life on the line for a stranger, a stranger who would betray him to his death. The hunter was the hunted; Lord Summerisle tracked his every move from the privacy of his mansion. Summerisle felt a twinge of guilt, but he swallowed hard and set his jaw stubbornly. Sergeant Howie had embraced the delusions of Christianity. His austerity was a bitter skin that concealed the sweetness of the fruit underneath, the fruit of sensual passion. Summerisle longed for that sweetness, and in this lifetime, he would never be able to persuade the Sergeant to grace him with it.

 

_I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than you._

_O I have been dilatory and dumb,_

_I should have made my way straight to you long ago,_

_I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing but you._

 

Summerisle was unabashedly bisexual. His string of lovers rivaled that of Lord Byron, but they were all as fleeting as the glitter of a star. Sergeant Howie was chaste, like the wasted crescent moon. He had a chiseled face, and his gait was that of a King. Summerisle had spied him from afar; he’d wondered that the mainland could produce such treasures, and that year, for the first time ever, the apple crops on his island had failed. Only the Sergeant’s beauty could entice the Gods (if they existed!) to bring back the fruit. Summerisle was a pagan priest, but in his mind, he and the Gods were one. His will was theirs. Even his wild hairstyle was a tribute to the image of Nuada, the Sun God. Summerisle bore the burden of ensuring a blessed harvest, as much as the Gods ever did. In a real sense, gifting the Sergeant to the Gods was the closest he could get to claiming him as his own.

 

_I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,_

_None has understood you, but I understand you,_

_None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to yourself_

_None but has but found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in you,_

_None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never consent to subordinate you,_

_I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself._

 

Summerisle had watched Sergeant Howie long enough to know that he was not much more popular on the mainland than the island. Few people would miss him when he was gone. Many dismissed him as an oppressive bigot, a conservative opposed to everything, from premarital sex to sodomy. Summerisle knew the Sergeant’s faith was real, but recognized it as a cloak for a desire to lie with men. He and the Sergeant were mirror images of one another, linked in ways that Mary Bannock, his hapless wife-to-be, could never understand. Summerisle could not bring himself to envy her. Sergeant Howie loved her the way he did her Virgin namesake. There was nothing sexual about his feelings for her, however much she wished otherwise.

 

As he gazed out the window, his smart uniform stretched snugly over broad shoulders and lush buttocks. Summerisle had watched him from his armchair. It had taken all his self-control to keep from licking his lips.

 

“Children dancing naked!” Sergeant Howie sputtered. How prettily he blushed at the sight of Miss Rose and her students! Summerisle had laughed, rippling skilled fingers over the piano, and displaced his lascivious stare from the Sergeant onto the girls.

 

“Naturally,” He replied. “It’s much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on.”

 

Later that day, Summerisle took the Sergeant to his grandfather’s orchard, and offered him a taste of the island’s first apple. In Celtic paganism, it was traditional to give an apple to the object of your affections. Conla was the Prince of Ireland. A beautiful maiden fell for him. She threw him an apple to stake her claim; he took a bite, and was hers forever. She reeled him into her mysterious island, where they were immortal, and dined on her apples.

 

It was deliciously frustrating to see the Sergeant strain to resist both Willow and the Librarian. In another world, Summerisle would never have used these women as his go-betweens. He could simply take the Sergeant by the hand, and they would come together as lovers and equals. Summerisle would offer his heart like flowers at his feet. His teasing touches and soft kisses would erase all memory of the cold Christian God who stood between them.

 

_O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you!_

_You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon yourself all your life,_

_Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,_

_What you have done returns already in mockeries,_

_Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in mockeries, what is their return?_

 

Sergeant Howie shunned the pleasures of life to follow his Christian faith, and it was for this faith that Summerisle was planning to kill him. What benevolent God would demand such self-denial from His followers? Why would an all-powerful God permit anyone to suffer the death Summerisle had planned for him? Summerisle could not understand it. What made the Sergeant persist in trusting such a God? A strange part of Summerisle adored him all the more for keeping this innocent faith.

 

_The mockeries are not you,_

_Underneath them and within them I see you lurk,_

_I pursue you where none else has pursued you,_

_Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me,_

_The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if these balk others they do not balk me,_

_The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed, premature death, all these I part aside._

 

Sergeant Howie was drunk on religious dogma, and doomed to die a premature death. But his death would be followed by rebirth. Summerisle could not bear to think otherwise. Punch the Fool straddled the boundaries of life and death, and Summerisle just had to believe the Sergeant would return to him. Summerisle would savor his flesh and blood in the form of fruit. Surely, his love would understand the vampiric desire to worship his body. He himself believed he consumed the flesh of Christ as bread, and drank His blood in the form of wine.

 

_There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you,_

_There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is in you,_

_No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you,_

_No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for you._

 

In all his life, Summerisle had never known a better man than Sergeant Howie. (The Sun was setting, and Nuada took a moment to hide his face behind a dark cloud.) For all he claimed to love Nature, Summerisle would sacrifice a lot of animals tonight. He let his followers believe they could cure coughs by placing frogs in their mouths. His apple crops were not even native to the island. Summerisle’s grandfather had displaced the island’s indigenous crops to grow them. Summerisle continued the tradition of using religion as an opiate, to make his followers work in the fields.

 

Sergeant Howie was a Scottish man who owed his allegiance to the (dying) British Empire. Summerisle was the British Empire. He was not a Scottish Laird, but an English Lord, a colonizer who’d convinced an island of Scottish people to kill one of their own, because he adhered to a different faith. Sergeant Howie, who had been an avid bird-watcher, cherished Nature the way Saint Francis of Assisi did. He was as virtuous as Saint John the Baptist, and beautiful as Saint Sebastian had been in the torment of his martyrdom. If the Sergeant was right, he would sit among the Saints in Heaven. Summerisle was bound for Hell, to suffer forever the pangs of love.

 

_As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like carefully to you,_

_I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I sing the songs of the glory of you._

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story, please consider commenting and leaving a kudos! Constructive criticism is also welcome.


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